Kosovo Serb Politician Ivanovic’s Shooter ‘Still at Large’

None of the suspects arrested over the murder of Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic is believed to be the person who shot him, although they are thought to have aided the murder, claims a prosecution document seen by BIRN.

The street where Oliver Ivanovic was shot in Mitrovica in January. Photo: EPA/ Djordje Savic.

The Kosovo Special Prosecution says in a document which has been seen by BIRN that it has not yet identified the person who shot Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic in January in front of his party’s office in the north of the divided town of Mitrovica.

The document claims that the three people who have been arrested during the investigation so far, and others who are still wanted for arrest, aided the murder by offering facilities or concealing evidence.

The document says that the Special Prosecution has so far interviewed 40 witnesses in connection with the murder.

On November 23, Kosovo police arrested three suspects; two of them, Dragisa Markovic and Nedeljko Spasojevic, are members of the Kosovo police force, and the third, Marko Rosic, is a member of Partizan Belgrade fan club.

Another suspect in the case is Milan Radoicic, the vice-president of the main, Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb political party, Srpska Lista, but he has avoided arrest.

Radoicic was described as the real powerbroker in the mostly-Serb region of northern Kosovo by Ivanovic shortly before he was shot.

Radoicic fled to Serbia and remains at large.

Later in November, the prosecutor investigating the murder issued an arrest warrant for the secretary at Ivanovic’s party office in Mitrovica, Silvana Arsovic, on suspicion of tampering with the office’s security cameras. Arsovic was later released.

“She [Silvana Arsovic] was an official at the office of Oliver Ivanovic, and was paid as an administrator. Our suspicions are that she manipulated the security cameras,” prosecutor Syle Hoxha told BIRN in November.

Ivanovic was the leader of a Kosovo Serb party called Freedom, Democracy, Justice, and was seen as a political moderate who advocated coexistence between Kosovo’s Serb minority and Albanian majority.

At the time of his death, he was being retried for ordering the murder of Kosovo Albanians during the war in 1999. He pleaded not guilty.